‘No condemnation then?’
‘No – and there’s none from you either, is there?’
‘Not really. But I wouldn’t want anyone else to pick up on it, in the way you have. If Cairo caught a whiff of it, one or other of them would probably be recalled. And homosexuality may have been an accepted norm in ancient Greece, but wartime Crete isn’t ancient Greece. If word got about, there’s no telling how Kit’s band of partisans would react. They may very well be fine with it, but on the other hand, they may not. And without the confidence and trust of the men he leads, an SOE officer can’t function.’ He drained his glass of raki and said, ‘You haven’t said anything to anyone else, have you, Ella?’
‘No. Not even to Kate. I think it’s something Kit will want to tell her himself – when the time is right and when he both wants to and has the opportunity.’
Kostas Alfred, who had been rolling his ball against the cafeneion wall, hopeful of Lewis throwing it to him again, finally gave up all hope and, with the ball in both hands, ran up to Ella. ‘Can I see if Orestes wants to play ball with me, Mummy?
‘Yes, sweetheart, but remember you are three and a half, and Orestes isn’t three until Easter. Don’t throw the ball at him too hard.’
‘Would that be Orestes Mamalakis?’ Lewis asked, as Kostas Alfred raced off on sturdy fat legs, ‘Angelo’s youngest?’
‘Yes. In Kalamata there are plenty of children his age to play with. Dimitri’s two boys are three and four years old, and Zenobia’s granddaughter is four.’
As he saw Pericles enter the far side of the square, Lewis rose to his feet and slung his sakouli over his shoulder. ‘Just before I go, what do the women of Kalamata think about Nikoleta having moved in with Nico’s mother at Réthymnon?’
Ella tilted her head a little to one side. ‘They think that she and Nico are preparing to marry. And because they know Nikoleta is wanted for spying, they are relieved that she is no longer living at the cafeneion where, if a stranger were to come and recognize her, they might betray her and bring the Germans down on the village. Instead of which . . . ?’
Lewis was waving towards Pericles and entirely missed the odd inflection in Ella’s voice.
‘Instead of which,’ he said, ‘she is in Réthymnon, where no one knows she is wanted for spying and where she is constantly picking up information and passing it on to Sholto who, on the eastern slopes of Mount Ida, is not too far from Réthymnon.’ He grinned. ‘You never know, Ella. Nikoleta and Nico make a very good-looking couple and perhaps Kalamata’s gossips are right. Perhaps she and Nico will marry.’ And with that, he kissed her on the cheek and set off across the square towards Pericles.
Ella watched him go. That Nikoleta had moved to Réthymnon so that she could continue being active in the resistance and, in the bargain, see more of Nico was certainly not Kate’s reading of why Nikoleta had gone there. However, as Kate had obviously not shared her thoughts with Lewis, she had no intention of doing so. In her opinion, when it came to her sister-in-law Nikoleta, it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
JUNE 1944
Nikoleta and Sholto were sitting in a small, dark bar in one of the warren of narrow streets that huddled around Réthymnon’s harbour. For Sholto, time unaccompanied by any of his partisans, Kapetans or another SOE officer was time hard won and he was hoping to make the most of it. For both of them, passing through the checkpoints before the city could be accessed and walking through the German-sentried streets of Réthymnon was an adrenalin-powered buzz that, reckless by nature, they both got a kick out of.
For Nikoleta, lodging with Nico’s mother near the Church of Our Lady of the Angels, brushing past German soldiers in the streets was something she did on a daily basis and, because she did, she dressed unobtrusively in black and with a black head-kerchief covering her hair. When in Réthymnon, Sholto also dressed plainly in shabby breeches and a many-buttoned shiny-with-wear waistcoat, his give-away light-brown hair hidden by a black head-cloth. False identity papers ensured they had no trouble at checkpoints, and Sholto was unarmed – a necessity when a checkpoint had to be passed. That he was unarmed only added to the thrill of danger that he felt.
He’d come into Réthymnon for a meeting with the town’s mayor, nearly giving the mayor a heart attack when, almost cheek-by-jowl with a German officer, Sholto entered the mayor’s office.
Now, seated across a zinc-topped table from Nikoleta, he took hold of her hands and imprisoned them in his, saying fiercely, ‘The Allies are going to win this war, Scarlett, and when they do, I’ll no longer be on Crete and an SOE officer. Life will get back to normal, and when it does I want you to be with me.’
Her almond-shaped eyes, like the eyes in a Minoan fresco, flashed fire. ‘How can I be with you when we are not married? And how can we be married, when you are already married?’
It was, he had to admit, a question that needed some kind of an answer.
He said fiercely, ‘Daphne and I will be divorcing when the war is over.’
‘Divorce? I do not know this word. What is it? And does Daphne know she will be getting one of these and will then not be married to you any more?’
Sholto thought of being reunited in Cairo with Daphne and of then almost immediately announcing that not only did he want a divorce, but that he wanted one as quickly as possible; and that, no matter how much she protested, he was going to get one.
He thought of the grounds on which he could get one.
Adultery was the most straightforward, but also the most messy. His career at the Foreign Office would go down the pan. Did he care? Yes, passionately; but not as passionately as he wanted to tie Scarlett to him forever. Five years’ separation was also grounds for divorce, but wartime separation wouldn’t count and, on the grounds of separation, it was Daphne who would have to bring the divorce action – something she was very unlikely to do.
Nikoleta’s eyes were still flashing fire and holding his.
He remembered the last time he and Daphne had been together. It had been in the Villa Ariadne, minutes before the sky over Heraklion had blackened with invading Nazi paratroopers. He also remembered his parting words to her. He hadn’t yet become enslaved by Scarlett, but what he had said had, nevertheless, been very specific.
He had told Daphne he would never forgive her for not accompanying Caspian to Cairo and that it was all over between them. And if that didn’t mean she knew he wanted a divorce, he didn’t know what did.
Now he said with deep passion, ‘Three years ago I told Daphne it was all over between us. She knows that when the war is over, our marriage will end in divorce.’
‘Truly?’
‘Truly.’ His voice was low with sincerity.
‘And when this happens, you will marry me?’
He wanted to reach across the table and drag Nikoleta into his arms, but it would be behaviour in public so un-Cretan-like it would draw unwelcome attention from a bartender, who could, for all he knew, be a collaborationist. He had to content himself with clasping her hands even more tightly, and saying thickly, ‘Yes, Scarlett my darling. I promise you on all that is sacred that I will marry you. What I want to know is, will you marry me?’
‘If I marry you, will we live in London and will I be able to have tea with King George and Queen Elizabeth and the little princesses?’
‘Yes, we’ll live in London,’ he said, dealing with the easiest part of the question first. He thought of the damage a divorce and remarriage to a Cretan girl was going to do to his career and swiftly amended what he’d said. ‘And if we don’t live in London, we will always have a home in London that we can visit.’
‘But why . . . ?’ she began, a frown pulling her sleek, dark eyebrows together.
‘Why is it possible we wouldn’t be living in our London house? Because I might very well be working in Washington.’
It was true. In America he might, God willing, still have a career in the world of diplomacy and, in America
, Nikoleta wouldn’t be socially cold-shouldered. As Lady Hertford, she would be regarded as an exotic knockout.
‘And the King and Queen and little princesses?’
It was a question he couldn’t answer as she wanted him to. As a man who had been divorced, he wouldn’t stand a hope in hell of socializing with the royal family again, but he knew what Nikoleta’s reaction would be if he said so. He said instead, ‘When we marry, you will be a viscountess and at grand events will wear a tiara.’
‘A tiara?’
‘A tiara is a type of crown.’
Nikoleta let out a deep sigh of satisfaction. Being a viscountess and wearing a tiara were not things Lewis, or Kit, had ever promised.
Sholto had clinched it, and he knew it. ‘I have to make love to you,’ he said urgently. ‘If I don’t make love to you soon, I shall explode.’
They had both been leaning over the table towards each other, but now, although her hands were still imprisoned in his, she drew back a little, her navy-dark eyes cautious. ‘That is not the custom in Crete. Not until after marriage. Lewis never asked such a thing of me, and neither did Kit.’
It was something Sholto found hard to believe of Lewis, but quite easy to believe of Kit.
He said, ‘Lewis and Kit didn’t love you as I do. They didn’t want to have you with them always, as I do. They didn’t know how very, very special you are, Scarlett.’
‘That is true.’ There was complacency in her voice. ‘I am special. Always I have known it. Ever since the great Sir Arthur said I was like a god-daughter to him, I have known it. I was different because Sir Arthur had me taught English and gave me English books to read: Alice in Wonderland; Peter Pan; The Secret Garden; The Children’s Homer; The Golden Treasury of Children’s Poems; The Kings and Queens of England. And I grew up spending time with Palace of Minos archaeologists. I was always different from other village children. I never fit in. Not even when I was small. And because when I was seventeen Lewis took such an interest in me, no Cretan man ever thought of asking me to marry him.’
Laughter bubbled up in her throat. ‘And I did not mind, because I did not want a Cretan man, all smelling of sheep and wanting a wife who would bring water in from the pump, and dry laundry on boulders and milk the goats and look after the hens. And now I never will have, because I will be a viscountess and wear a tiara!’
Her delight at the prospect of her future with him was so infectious that Sholto cracked with laughter. The insane thing he’d now committed himself to – divorcing Daphne in order to marry a Cretan village girl – was something he’d never felt more sure of in his life. Unlike with Daphne, this time he wasn’t being pressured into anything. This time the decision he’d come to was his, and his alone, and he was so goddamn sure of it that, uncaring of the bartender – and anyone else – he let out a whoop and punched the air.
Kit wasn’t feeling similarly exuberant. He was sixty miles distant from Nick and, because of the mountainous terrain of those sixty miles, might just as well have been six hundred miles distant. Logically he knew he shouldn’t be feeling so lack-lustre and dejected about their separation. It wasn’t as if his love affair with Nick was over. He knew with utter confidence that was never going to happen; that he and Nick were going to be together forever. They were only divided by the circumstances of war – as was half the world – and the war had turned in the Allies’ favour, which was cause for massive relief, not dejection. Two weeks ago Allied troops in Italy had liberated Rome, and only two days later news had come from Cairo that the Allies had stormed ashore in Normandy. Hitler’s Fortress Europe had been breached. Victory was now a certainty, and was only a matter of time.
The Signals sergeant he was working with, Jimmy McKay, was a good-humoured Scot.
‘I didn’t know there was such a thing as a jovial Scot,’ he’d said to Jimmy not long after their introduction, thinking it an amusing thing to say and knowing that, no matter how much he wished it was Nick and not Jimmy who was with him, he and Jimmy needed to get on well together.
‘Oh, aye,’ Jimmy had responded with a grin. ‘We’re nae all maungy buggers.’
So things could be worse, for he and Jimmy did get on, but Kit was careful not to give Jimmy a clue as to his sexuality. Living as they did in such close proximity to each other, he was fairly sure it was something Jimmy would be more comfortable not knowing about.
The information that was collected in and sent out from Nipos was nearly all to do with the German fleet anchored in Suda Bay and with the German planes flying in and out of Maleme airfield. Before the Allied landings in Sicily, it was the kind of information that had been vital; now, a measure of its importance had been lost, but the indication such information gave of German troop strengths in the eastern Mediterranean was still of major interest to Cairo – and was not gathered without men risking their lives.
Unlike Lewis and Sholto, Kit didn’t live cheek-by-jowl with a hard core of the men he led, and his and Jimmy’s hideout wasn’t a cave, but one of the circular stone huts above Nipos that the shepherds used for shelter and for making cheese. They were built like igloos and the cramped conditions meant he spent as little time in it as possible, unlike Jimmy, who only left his wireless transmitting set for calls of nature.
‘Lucky sod,’ Jimmy had said to him that morning as, rifle over his shoulder, Kit had left the cheese-hut for a climb to a spot a few miles away that gave an excellent view of the only serviceable motor road the island possessed – the road that clung to the coast and ran from Heraklion via Réthymnon to Canea.
Canea, situated between Suda Bay and Maleme, had been German central headquarters from the first days of the island’s occupation and was the most heavily garrisoned part of the island. Because of German security, it was a town difficult to get information out of, but his partisans did so, bringing to Nipos the information they garnered, which Jimmy then promptly passed on by wireless to Cairo. The latest information had indicated that something unusual was taking place in Canea, and Kit wanted to check the traffic travelling towards it.
As Kit headed northwards over rough mountainous terrain, his thoughts were no longer on what might, or might not, be happening in Canea. They were on Nick. Nick had transformed his life. He had enabled Kit to accept his sexuality without any feelings of guilt or shame. And he had done so in such a matter-of-fact, easy manner that Kit blessed him for it.
It had happened when they had been sitting by the side of a waterfall pool, high on the eastern side of Mount Ida. It had been a hot day and, in mutual accord, they’d pulled their boots off and plunged their feet into the deliciously icy water.
Nick had pulled a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and, when they had both lit up, he’d said casually, ‘I hadn’t realized, when Christos showed us the photograph of his sister, that you and she had had a romance.’
All his feelings of relaxation had fled. Kit didn’t like talking about Nikoleta – and he didn’t want Nick thinking badly of him, for the way he had treated her.
‘It wasn’t exactly a romance,’ he’d said as laconically as he could manage.
Nick had blown a plume of acrid blue smoke into the air and said, ‘Even though she is stunningly beautiful?’
‘No.’ He’d avoided looking towards Nick. ‘It was just a friendship that became misunderstood.’ Nick hadn’t said anything, and Kit had continued, prompted by an impulse he couldn’t restrain, ‘Is Nikoleta the sort of woman you go for, Nick?’
‘Me?’ There had been affectionate amusement in Nick’s voice. ‘No, Kit. I like women – back home I have lots of women friends – but I don’t “go” for them, as you put it. Women don’t affect me that way.’
Kit had felt as if his heart had ceased to beat. He’d spun his head round and said, not even pretending to misunderstand him, ‘And you’re at ease with it? You’re happy to be thought queer?’
Nick had given Kit his slow smile and said, ‘Yes. Because of the attitude towards homosexuality, it isn’t a
lways easy, but acknowledging what you are is far more comfortable than an emotional sham of a life, don’t you think?’
Their eyes had held. The noise of the waterfall had thundered in Kit’s ears. ‘Yes,’ he’d heard himself say, and then, ‘You know, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Nick’s smile had deepened. ‘I knew the minute I first shook your hand.’
Dry-mouthed, he’d said, ‘And you know how I feel about you?’
And Nick had said, ‘Of course. It’s exactly how I feel about you.’
Feeling as if he was about to step off a precipice into infinite space and plucking up all the courage he possessed, Kit had said, ‘And now what do we do?’
Nick had put his arm around his shoulder and said, ‘What we do now is strip off and dive into the pool, buck-naked.’
‘And after?’ he’d said.
Nick’s eyes had met his, dark with heat. ‘And after I’ll show you what making love without shame or pretence is like.’
As Kit sat on his mountain perch now, simply remembering that day sent desire flooding through him. It had been his Rubicon. It had been the day his life had changed forever. The day there would never be any going back from.
A movement on the road caught his attention and he focused his binoculars a little more sharply. A convoy of trucks was coming in from the east. As the convoy drew nearer, he saw that every truck was packed tight with German soldiers. The convoy skirted the long nine-mile arm of Suda Bay and entered the outer limits of Canea.
Thoughtful, he lit up a Woodbine.
By the end of the day two more separate convoys of troop-laden trucks had travelled westwards into Canea and very little traffic had travelled eastwards. One thing was for certain. His informants in Canea were right: something very odd was happening there.
He set off for the hike back to Nipos, ninety-nine per cent certain that, with the war turning against them, the Germans were beginning to withdraw troops from outlying areas into Canea, which might mean that sentry posts and blockhouses at remote crossroads were being abandoned.
Beneath the Cypress Tree Page 40